


cows and secrets and hot boys

by theacesofspades



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Fluff, M/M, mentions of Kavinsky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 03:16:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10733016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theacesofspades/pseuds/theacesofspades
Summary: Adam wished he didn’t get so jealous sometimes.





	cows and secrets and hot boys

**Author's Note:**

> the title? it was the save title in my documents and i couldn't think of anything else, so now we're stuck with it. oh well

“Did you ever kiss Kavinsky?”

Ronan startled, and Adam felt a strange sort of pride; startling Ronan Lynch was a difficult thing to do. But he had been concentrating on one of the cows, which, of course, meant that all of his conscious thought was directed away from the entire outside world. When Ronan was brainstorming on how to wake his father’s dream creations, everything faded away, including his boyfriend, excluding the magical dream cows.

They were sitting in a barn at the Barns. Or, Ronan was sitting and Adam was standing in a barn at the Barns. Or, Ronan was kneeling on the ground next to a magically comatose dream cow, draped across its back with his arms around its neck and his head on its head, as though that might somehow aid in its awakening, and Adam, having stood up a while ago to stretch his legs, was walking around, weaving through the other magically comatose dream cows and exploring, in a barn at the Barns.

Adam hadn’t meant to ask the question. Not out loud. He had wondered, of course. They all had. It had been obvious to all of them that there was some sort of _something_ between Kavinsky and Ronan. None of them had ever been truly able to know the extent of it, though. Even Gansey hadn’t wanted to pry, something Adam knew for a fact because while they were all too nervous to ask Ronan about his relationship with Kavinsky, Gansey seemed a safe middle ground to question.

(Gansey, Adam remembered, had been frustrated with his inability to give a straight answer. Gansey liked knowing every little piece of his friends, and not knowing something so big about one of them had really seemed to bother him.)

Still, he hadn’t meant to ask. He understood there were parts of Ronan that he didn’t want to share. Understood that Ronan not wanting to share every piece of himself was not a statement on Adam or the virtue of Adam’s soul or anything - though it did feel like it at times - but rather a boundary. One that might one day be breached, but today was a place for Ronan to keep parts of himself to himself. Adam understood that. He respected it. He had his own boundaries, walls he’d thought no one would ever get close to, but that he now thought might someday be torn down and never rebuilt.

Adam realized Ronan hadn’t said anything.

“Ronan?”

Ronan sighed. He shifted - as though he could find a comfortable position leaning on a _cow_ \- but he didn’t turn to face Adam.

“What makes you think I did?”

Adam noticed with a start that, for once, Ronan didn't sound aggressively defensive in his question, just mildly curious. If he didn’t turn to meet Adam’s eyes, it wasn’t shame. He was just busy. The cow had his attention more than his boyfriend asking him if he'd ever made out with his . . . well. That was the problem. What had Kavinsky been to Ronan? An enemy? A fellow adrenaline junkie? An odd, twisted connection to his dad through their shared inexplicable abilities?

Adam wasn’t really sure he wanted to know, but he’d already asked, so he might as well keep going.

“Back with. . . .” He stopped and considered. How best to ask a question of Ronan Lynch when one didn’t know how he would react? Adam didn’t want to accidentally start a fight with his boyfriend. Today was a good day. Today was a day for relaxing. “Back with the whole thing with Matthew, and Kavinsky, and the dragon, and everything. . . . We know you guys spent time together. I was just wondering if - during that - if you-”

He’d already said it once. He didn’t really want to say it again - _Ronan_ with _Kavinsky_ \- so he stopped and waited.

Ronan hummed, considering. Or maybe just humming. His eyes were closed and he fell and rose with the up and down of the sleeping cow's breathing. Adam was a little surprised he hadn’t fallen asleep, but Ronan did have a complicated relationship with sleeping. He looked totally and completely relaxed, and Adam felt a quick rush of emotion flow over him, tightening his chest. The emotion was complicated and not immediately identifiable. He ignored it.

“You’re not asking the right question.”

Adam was confused. And then he thought he might understand. And then he felt a little sick.

And he wasn't sure he wanted to know, but he asked the right question. “Did Kavinsky ever kiss you?”

Ronan didn’t respond for a long time. He just lay on the cow, rising and falling, up and down. Eventually, Adam figured he must have really fallen asleep (he’d have to talk to Ronan about irony and counterproductivity), so he wandered off further into the old barn, stepping carefully around the cows.

There was a lot to see in here, very little of it what one would expect to find in a regular barn. Magical, dream cows. A peacock in the rafters, its sleep similarly enchanted. Floating lights that Ronan had strewn through the air. And some sort of psychopompic, satyr girl, somewhere around here. So much of it unusual and inexplicable. So much of it comfortingly familiar, in a pleasantly weird sort of way.

Adam didn’t know if he was truly used to the miraculous oddness of his life, but it beat the alternative.

And he was just a little bit in love with it, too. With all of it.

“No. Kavinsky never kissed me.”

Now it was Adam’s turn to startle. He’d been watching one of the lights float gently through the air and it took him a second to work his mind around what Ronan was saying. And what Ronan was saying felt unfinished. “But?”

“But he wanted to.”

“Ronan -”

“He was going through some shit. I was going through some shit. We just got through it differently.”

Adam didn’t bother to point out that Kavinsky really hadn’t gotten through his shit. Ronan knew that, and saying it outloud wouldn’t do anyone any good.

“Did it bother you to think we had?”

Adam worried his bottom lip between his teeth. He didn’t really want to admit that it had, but as Blue kept reminding him, communication in relationships was key. And as Gansey kept impressing upon him, being honest and forthright with Ronan was key.

“Yeah, it did.” Adam confessed, looking down at his shoes. They were scuffed and worn and were quickly on the way to losing their original color. Adam had never before realized how interesting they were. Far more interesting than admitting he’d worried that Ronan had had something with Kavinsky.

Ronan snorted. “He wasn’t my type.”

Adam grinned and looked up at Ronan, who had suddenly become more interesting than Adam’s shoes. Ronan was still lying on the cow, doing . . . whatever it was he was trying to do. He didn’t bother asking; Ronan’s explanation would probably contain a healthy dose of snark and magic, and would fail to really explain what exactly he was trying to accomplish.

“You were his type, though.” Adam considered, walking through the cows and pushing floating lights aside as he passed.

“Yeah, I was.” Ronan laughed. Adam couldn’t tell if it was bitter or genuine. It bothered him a little that he couldn’t. He pushed that aside, too.

Still, secure in the knowledge that there had never been anything between Ronan and Kavinsky, on Ronan’s part at least, Adam felt brave enough to keep wondering outloud.

“Was there ever a chance?”

“No. He reminded me too much of me.”

Adam could see the logic in that. They had certainly reminded him of each other, at least superficially. Both in love with racing, with anything that got their blood moving and made them feel alive. Both angry at the world. Both ready to leave it at any given second. But Ronan had made it through. He had found a reason to.

“You’re better, though.”

“Maybe.”

Adam didn’t press it, since insisting on it would do nothing but start an argument, but he knew he was right. Whether or not he wanted to acknowledge it, Ronan was a good person. A deeply good person. Adam wouldn’t have bothered with him if he weren’t.

He wasn’t ever going to waste his time with less than good people ever again.

The conversation over, Adam continued his excursion through the old barn. He found his way over to the feed bin in the back; he wondered faintly if there would be any baby mice in it now. They were really cute.

Before he had the chance to open the bin and look, though, he heard Ronan mumble something from the front of the barn. He couldn’t make out the words. Ronan was too far away and Adam’s head was turned the wrong way.

He straightened. “Say again?”

“You’re not the first guy I ever kissed, though.” Adam stilled. He wasn’t? He had thought. . . . He had really sort of hoped. . . .

He knew that Ronan had known he was gay for a long time, and that he had had most of his life to come to terms with his sexuality, but Adam was still adjusting to realizing he liked guys, that he was allowed to be attracted to guys just as much as girls (He was _bisexual_ , as Blue had gleefully informed him when he’d asked if there was a way to put his feelings into words. And then she’d high-fived him and shouted _me too!_ ). Adam being Ronan’s first boyfriend and Ronan being Adam’s first boyfriend . . . it had kind of felt like figuring things out together. If Ronan was just as inexperienced in practice as Adam was in theory, it was somehow easier.

He had really believed he was Ronan’s first kiss.

“Anyone I know?” Adam asked, faux-casual, abandoning the feed bin and strolling through the barn. Like it didn’t matter, like it didn’t affect him. He wished it didn’t. He wished he didn’t get so jealous sometimes.

“Noah.”

Adam’s heart skipped a beat. Noah? He hadn’t realized he and Ronan were that close. Not romantically.

“But that was just like, I don’t know. Noah wanted to see if he could kiss a person, I . . . indulged him. That was that.”

“Oh. That was sweet of you.”

“It was nice,” Ronan said. Adam wandered farther through the cows. He didn’t really want to hear his boyfriend talk about how nice kissing their dead friend was. It just hurt his heart in too many different, confusing ways.

“Gansey.”

That got his attention. Adam turned. Ronan was still kneeling by that cow, but he had sat up, and now he was watching Adam.

“What about him?”

“I’ve also kissed Gansey.”

“Gansey?” Adam couldn’t imagine a world where someone could downgrade from Richard Campbell Gansey III to Adam Parrish and be happy with it. “He never said anything.” Adam thought back to the night Ronan had first kissed him, the night he had first kissed Ronan. He had told Gansey, and Gansey hadn’t said a word. Why hadn’t Gansey told him?

“Nah, he wouldn’t. It wasn’t really a thing to talk about. We kissed one night, when we were younger and shit, but that was it. Nothing ever came of it. Just stupid teenage bullshit.” And Adam could kick himself for feeling so happy to hear that, but instead he allowed himself the glee.

“Why not?”

In lieu of an immediate answer, Ronan got off the cow. He sat down on the ground and leaned back like the cow was a comfortable chair, and not a large, stinking farm animal. He reached a hand out to Adam, who walked back across the barn, took his hand, and sat down next to him.

Ronan and the cow were very warm, and Adam happily leaned into both. He kept Ronan’s hand in his, and Ronan didn’t try to retrieve it.

“We were young. Younger. And stupid. And we were both starting to question shit. Y’know?”

Adam nodded. He did. He had gone through that part of growing up only very recently. He was still getting used to it. It kind of really sucked.

“One day we just. Kissed. To see what it was like. It was nice, but it was weird.”

Adam looked up at Ronan. He was looking down at their hands, lost in thought.

“I love Gansey.” Ronan confessed. Adam didn’t let it affect him. “Always have. But.”

Ronan paused, and Adam didn’t press, letting him gather his thoughts.

“We’re better as brothers.”

Adam noted that there was a difference in the way he said it, like he and Declan were brothers but he and Gansey were _brothers_. And there was a significance in it, too. The love Ronan had for Gansey was no lesser than his love for Adam just because it was not romantic or sexual in nature. It was just a different kind of love, just as intense and strong and deep, the way Ronan loved.

Adam had known, of course, that the relationship between Ronan and Gansey was never anything besides a deep, deep platonic love. It was still nice to hear him say it, though.

He smiled at Ronan.

“And us?”

Ronan grinned big and wide, a rare thing, and laced their fingers together, which was not so rare an occurrence as one might have expected of Notorious “Bad Boy” Ronan Lynch. Adam wasn’t entirely sure what about his hands Ronan found so fascinating, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t love it (and his boyfriend believed lying was a sin).

“This is good.” Ronan looked him in the eye as he said it, telling him with his stare that there was no room to argue. He leaned in and said it again, quietly and directly into Adam’s good ear. “This is good.”

Adam’s face warmed, and he put his answer on Ronan’s lips, grinning. “Yeah. It is.”

**Author's Note:**

> This started because I read an analysis on kavinsky and his role in dream thieves. I originally started wanting to talk more about Kavinsky and his impact on Ronan, their relationship, etc. Oops. Maybe another day!
> 
> As always, comments are the best! ;)


End file.
